The University of Kentucky baseball team began the 2018 season riding the momentum of a 2017 campaign that took it to the brink of the school's first-ever College World Series.
When the Wildcats opened their second season under Coach Nick Mingione with a 14-2 record and ranked among the top 10 teams in the country this spring, most anything seemed possible.
What did not seem plausible, however, was that Kentucky would find itself squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble after dropping its final three games of the regular season at Vanderbilt, then falling to Auburn, 4-3 in 11 innings, in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Hoover, Ala.